


His Maiden's Mother

by KainichivonDiamond



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Fluff, The Talk, aka the one where Anders is rightfully afraid of Leandra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 07:59:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9874712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KainichivonDiamond/pseuds/KainichivonDiamond
Summary: Being her daughter’s friend that visited on occasion and reassured, somewhat falsely, that Bethany’s life as a Grey Warden wasn’t misery, had been fine so long as he avoided how madly in love from afar he’d been with Hawke. Now he was her daughter’s lover that shared her bed most nights and was entirely sure that Leandra was just waiting to ask Bodhan to very kindly mop up the mess Anders’ blood had made of the floor after she’d finished feeding him to their dog.





	

Hawke had invited him to move in, an invitation he’d accepted readily enough. A soft bed with a warm, willing body to sleep next to was leagues more appealing than his cold cot with a ratty blanket at the clinic. He had a good deal of fondness for Bodahn and his boy, as well, and rather enjoyed spending time talking with them about the Warden-Commander, how she’d been before he’d known her, and enchantments. Even Orana, timid and submissive as she was, brought him amusement with the way she cringed at his attempts to play the lute. Yes, all together the Hawke Estate was a lovely home.

Well, if you discounted the small fact that her mother was right down the hall.

Now, Anders liked Leandra. She was kind, funny when you spoke with her for a period, smarter than most gave her credit for. She also loved her children with a force that would have an archdemon thinking twice under her glare. Being her daughter’s friend that visited on occasion and reassured, somewhat falsely, that Bethany’s life as a Grey Warden wasn’t misery, had been fine so long as he avoided how madly in love from afar he’d been with Hawke. Now he was her daughter’s lover that shared her bed most nights and was entirely sure that Leadra was just waiting to ask Bodhan to very kindly mop up the mess Anders’ blood had made of the floor after she’d finished feeding him to their dog.

This fear kept him away from the estate until late at night and entirely when Hawke drank herself to sleep at the Hanged Man. Reminded him of the fumbling boy he might have been outside of the Circle, sneaking through a backdoor to slip into the girl he fancied’s bed while avoiding her sleeping parents.

That was the usual plan, at least. Tonight he came home to find Leandra seated on a stool in the backroom of the house. She took a sip from a cup of tea and gestured to another stool with its own cup of tea resting on it. “I was beginning to worry you were spending the night in Darktown once again. Please, sit, you look like you’re about to fall over.”

Anders gives a sheepish smile and sets his staff against the wall before picking up the tea. It was tepid at first sip but he soon has it steaming. How long had she been waiting for him? “One of my regular patients had a bad run in with some bandits on his way home, took longer than I anticipated to patch him up.” He explains, which was mostly true.

“Some mothers would fear their daughter’s honor was being besmirched, what with how often you spend your nights away.” Leandra’s smirking against the rim of her teacup when Anders nearly chokes on his own tea. Maker’s breath it was genetic. “Calm down. I’m not as oblivious as some would believe. I know what a boy looks like when he’s smitten; I also don’t believe you fool enough to cross my daughter in such a way.”

He laughs nervously; he wasn’t sure what would be worse, breaking her heart or the pain all their friends would bring upon him. He’d be more arrow than man by the end of it. “Despite evidence to the contrary, I don’t have a death wish, no. And I am very fond of Haw—of Mia.” It still feels awkward saying her first name.

Leandra lowers her cup, a wistful smile on her face. She looks to the door with a sigh. “I was younger than her when I snuck out that door to run away with Malcolm. A noble girl and an apostate; I thought life on the run would be so romantic.” She shakes her head before returning her focus to Anders. “I was a spoiled, silly girl with no concept of how _hard_ that would be. All I needed was love. Even when we were forced to run…it never settled in until Mia came home covered in a templar’s blood with the twins crying in hand. You’ve never known heartbreak until you know you’ve horribly failed your child…she was ten years old.”

Anders had been told the story; Hawke slaying a Templar that tried to take away a young Bethany who could barely control her powers. Hawke joked about it but he knew the pain she harbored. Regret for leaving the man gurgling with a knife stuck in his throat, unable to even give him the mercy of death. Not that Anders truly believed the Templar deserved that mercy, but it was something he knew haunted his beloved. “She adores you. Everything she does—”

“Is for her family, I know. Malcolm and I…we put so much responsibility on her, too much. She was never the young woman she had the right to be.” She reaches forward to touch Anders’ knee, touch light. “She knows what sort of life awaits her, loving an apostate such as you, and it’s one she’s walking into with open eyes. You make her happy and that is all I can ask of you.”

In the back of his mind a voice that may have been Justice or perhaps his own repeated all his fears. The terror that he might lose control, that he could hurt her, that Meredith or the Templars could rip them apart at a moment’s notice just as they had done with Karl. The idea that he was getting her mother’s blessing, that a woman who had lost so much would entrust him with her daughter’s heart… it was ridiculous beyond words. If she knew what Anders was capable of, she’d take off with Mia, far away from Anders and all he could do to her.

Leandra’s hand pushes his bangs out of his face before she presses a kiss to his forehead, drawing him out of the building mania he was unwittingly falling into. His cheeks are warm at the motherly smile she gives him. He wishes he could’ve known the woman she might’ve been without the life of fear and hiding she’d lived, without the weight of loss on her heart. The woman an apostate had loved, who had abandoned everything to love a man that the world told her not to. How similar was that young woman to the one he himself loved?

She must’ve been beautiful once. She was now, in the motherly way that many women are. But there was the ever present tragedy to her beauty, that sadness that never really left her eyes. Once she must’ve been a proper beauty; he imagined her the sort that a bard would sing of and men would go to war for. All of Hawke’s strength tempered by Bethany’s warmth and kindness. To have known that woman…and to have known the children she would have raised freely, not in secret, with the mage she loved.

_Someday someone like Malcolm will love someone like her and the world will see nothing wrong by it._

He manages to catch her hand before she fully pulls away and does his best to return the warmth of her smile. He would never know the woman she once was, or that she might’ve been if the world was fair, but the one he knew was grand enough he supposed. The woman that had brought him the love of his life and deemed him worthy of such a gift. “Thank you. I…I can’t say I’ll ever understand what I’ve done to earn any of this, but thank you. For what it’s worth, I do love her. More than words could express.”

Leandra’s smile is made of that tragic beauty that she exists in at all times. “Good, because that’s the sort of love my daughter deserves. I would accept nothing less for her.”

Anders plays her words over and over in his mind as he slips into the bed he shares with Hawke. She sleepily tries to speak but he silences her with a kiss and a quiet shushing. Her back is warm against his chest when he holds her to him. The world could do with more women like the Hawkes in it, he decides, and lets himself dream of a day that he may be able to bring one more into the world with Mia’s help.


End file.
